B is for Bordhi and little sock-heel Bowl

I'm wide awake, so you get a post before I head off to Arizona in the morning.

If you like to knit socks and can manage to get to a class with Cat Bordhi on her new sock architectures, do it. Go with an open mind for seeing the way socks fit a foot in new light.

One of the things Cat discovered is the the 'gussets' don't have to be in pairs or in a particular location on a sock. The 'gusset' on the mauve mini sock I knit in class spreads over the top of the instep and is created with yarn overs.

On this red mini-sock-in-progress the 'gusset' is expanding in the arch area on the bottom of the foot.

In the full size samples Cat brought you could immediately see that these new architectures give a traditionally shaped sock when finished. Despite all expectations and preconceptions to the contrary.

Cat now uses her version of Judy's Magic Cast On for almost all of her sock knitting, though she includes others in her book. She is currently encouraging Judy through the process of writing a book on the many ways to use this cast-on after convincing her to write it.

One thing that hadn't occurred to me - with this cast-on, if you just continue to knit flat on the first needle you end up with a provisional cast-on with a needle already threaded through it back at the start.

Cat insists she's not really that smart, just willing to suspend her beliefs and think about things in new ways. I think she'd need both the willingness and the smarts to come up with and work through the things she does.

Cat has also come up with a toe up technique for constructing a heel that looks like a traditional flap-style, but nothing ever flaps and you don't have to pick up stitches.

And she showed us a technique for picking up her short row wraps and putting them behind the stitch on the needle. This both hides the wrap and makes it much easier to knit it together with the stitch.

In class we made little baskets using the heel turn twice to learn the technique before starting our mini socks. This lovely little one was knit by Cat. Mine had a decided difference in gauge between the two halves of its bottom.

If you can't get to a class with her, get the book and then check out her YouTube videos of many of the new techniques in the book. The videos are very informal and a bit funny, like Cat, but very informative and clear, also like Cat.